Friday, February 23, 2007

Interesting interview of Michael Crichton on Charlie Rose. He starts off talking about how he doesn't believe that it should be possible to patent genes. He might be correct, but I found is argument oversimplified. These letters to the editor do a good job explaining why it might be a good idea to keep the ability to patent them.

He then explains his position on global warming. I agree with lots of what he is saying. I think we need independent verification that the climate models can accurately predict the global temperature over the next 10 years before law makers unquestioningly use their predictions for policy. I also agree with him that a carbon tax is a good idea (although unlike him, I can't claim to have supported it for 25 years). And I also agree that overall Gore is a good guy, but his dire predictions of rising sea levels in an Inconvenient Truth are not what the mainstream climate scientists are predicting (at least not in the IPCC).

3 comments:

It's incomprehensible to me how anybody can still deny the reality of global warming, particularly after release of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) Fourth Assessment Report on Feb. 2 of this year. We certainly know enough about the impacts of global warming to take action now, including a carbon tax as mentioned in the post. For more information about carbon taxes, see our Carbon Tax Center website at www.carbontax.org.

Interesting. Charlie Rose is not the most sympathetic interviewer for someone as iconoclastic as Crichton, but not too bad overall. 60 Minutes would have butchered it.

What is incomprehensible to me is how anybody can still use the term "global warming" instead of saying what he really means--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW). Euphemisms such as global warming tend to dumb down the debate.

As for denying that there is a debate about CAGW at all (even after the recent IPCC political report to policymakers v. 4!!!) that is truly incomprehensible.;-)Personally, I prefer to wait for the actual scientific report due out in May. But it concerns me that the IPCC has vowed to alter the scientific report to stay consistent with the political report.

I support what you guys are doing at carbontax.org 100%. I actually blogged about your site a while back. Let me know if there is anything I can do to support your cause.

If I were you, I would focus on the fact that even a supposed global warming denier like Crichton supports the carbon tax rather than how his point of view differs from you, but that is just me.

I think there is still a debate as to what the extent of global warming will be, how quickly it will occur and what the best way to counteract it are. With solar power becoming cheaper ever year, it is just a matter of time before major portions of energy production are generated that way. To what extent should we should implement taxes and rebates to speed this up and how large should they be? I think that is still up for debate.

Al,

I thought you might like this post. Glad to see that you enjoyed it.

As for "global warming" vs. CAGW, I use global warming because that is what I think is most likely.